NortonGhost is a recent addition to the
Norton product family. This software helps users take images of their hard
disk to clone or restore them in case of emergency. Ghost takes
what we can call a
photo of the contents of your hard disk and stores it on the drive of your
choice so you can restore it later. But Ghost 2001 is also very useful for
business environments since system administrator can clone one PC
configuration to easily and quickly deploy it over the network. Since it
was released Norton Ghost has quickly grown and is now one of the best
Ďcloningí tool. This new version 6.5 comes with several useful
enhancements weíll review. The key features of Ghost 2001 are:

Clone one hard drive to another

Create disk images for emergencies

Restore imaged files quickly and easily

Setup

Installing Norton Ghost 2001 is a breeze and in one
minute youíre done thanks to the small size it takes on your hard disk. You
donít even need to restart the computer after the setup since the software runs
under DOS.
If you own Norton SystemWorks 2001 youíll love the fact that Norton Ghost 2001
is perfectly integrated with it since you can launch Ghost and its utilities
directly from SystemWorks 2001.

Features

Norton Ghost 2001 carries the version number 6.5. The
major new feature of this new version is the LinuxEXT2
full support. Like for other FAT formats (NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, Ö) you can now
clone and backup Linux partitions. Even the Ghost 2001 Explorer that is used to
browse the content of an image file under Windows supports LinuxEXT2
images. Obviously Norton Ghost 2001 natively supports Windows 2000 NTFS 5
partitions. New to Ghost 2001 is the ability to add files or folder to an image
after youíve created it. The other new major feature of this release is the
ability to burn images directly on CD-R or CD-RWs using your CD burner. If
Norton Ghost 2001 supports IDE or SCSI compatible Packet Writing burners, itís
not the case for USB, FireWire and parallel burners. Norton Ghost 2001 can
create bootable CDs when you burn an image on this medium so youíll be able to
start your PC directly with the CD and restore the image instantly. Like in the
previous release, Norton Ghost 2001 comes with LiveUpdate so youíre sure to
always run the latest version.

First
Start

Even if Norton Ghost 2001 can be started directly from
Windows Me, it works under DOS. So when you want to create an image your PC will
reboot in DOS mode. However under Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Linux if you want
to use Norton Ghost 2001 youíll have to reboot the PC using else the bootable CD
provided or a boot floppy disk. If you want to start Ghost using a boot floppy
disk, youíll be glad to know that Norton Ghost 2001 comes with a Windows wizard
thatíll help you to create such a floppy by offering three different choices:
create a floppy disk thatíll initialize CD drives, create a network enabled
floppy (Ghost comes with drivers for the most well-known cards) or create a
direct transfer floppy. Indeed with Norton Ghost 2001 you can even create an
image file via a direct transfer between two computers using an USB or a
parallel cable. Norton Ghost 2001 supports a lot of image destinations: you can
save images on hard disk, ZIP, JAZ, DVD-Ram, CD burners and more generally every
SCSI or IDE device that comes with DOS drivers. When Ghost 2001 will start
youíll discover a clear & sober interface thatíll guide you to create your first
images.
Good thing to know is that the DOS interface of the software is commanded by the
mouse.
Ghost 2001 provides several features so you can choose the compression level of
your image file to save precious space. Creating an image file is almost fast
(even if it generally depends of the speed of your backup destination drive) and
youíre correctly informed about the status of the process due to the very
complete progress indicator window. Finally you can ask Ghost to check what it
writes on your backup disk to ensure the safety of your image file.

Norton Ghost 2001
Boot Wizard (click to enlarge)

Ghost
for which use?

The Personal Edition of Norton Ghost 2001 is specially
designed to help users creating a backup of their hard disks so they can restore
them later if a crash occurs. Indeed everyone knows that a working system is
like a jewel and that it should be protected against every threat. Creating an
image of your main hard disk will save you from hours and hours of reinstall
processes as if you need to reinstall everything youíll simply format the C:
drive, and restore the image. In approximately an hour youíll get back a healthy
working system. But Ghost 2001 can be useful to clone hard disks: imagine youíve
just bought a new hard drive you want to install as the C: one. Normally to do
so youíd have to unplug the C: drive and install the new one. On the new one
youíll have to reinstall everything to make it works. But with Norton Ghost 2001
youíll be able to transfer the exact contents of your old C: drive to the new
one in a few minutes! Best of all Norton Ghost 2001 will create a full sized new
partition on the new C: drive before restoring the whole image of the old drive
on it. That is to say your old 6.4Gb partitions will be transferred on a 21Gb
one (if your new HD is a 21Gb).

But Norton Ghost 2001 also comes
with Network support so you can use it on a TCP-IP based network to easily
deploy software, restore the system of an user, create an image file of a
network computer and more. Obviously to be able to do so your network should be
very fast, at least 100Mbps else it'll be very long to backup, restore or deploy
stuff.

CD
BackUp

We tested Norton Ghost 2001 with two different burners
(a Yamaha 8824s and a Yamaha CRW2100E) to create image files and we didnít
encounter any burning errors even if the burning speed was slow. Indeed with 8x,
12x, 16x burners, Norton Ghost 2001 will generally burn images at the maximum
speed of 4x (600kbps) so creating a 4 GB CD based image of a main hard disk can
takes a long time. Another thing to consider is that a CD backup will never fit
on one CD but most likely on five CDs. However due to the low cost of CD-Rs this
isnít a major drawback except that youíll have to switch CDs when youíll restore
the image. Obviously Norton Ghost 2001 supports disk spanning.

Image
Explorer

Norton Ghost 2001 comes with a Windows Image Explorer:
this small program will display the whole contents of the image file stored on
the disk youíve inserted and youíll be able to extract content on the fly
without restoring the whole image set. Best of all if the image file isnít
stored on a read-only media youíll be able to add files or folders. With Image
Explorer you can also open old images created with previous releases of Ghost.

Norton Ghost 2001
Image Explorer (Click to enlarge)

G-Disk

There was Fdisk now thereís GDisk: GDisk is a powerful
line command partitioning DOS tool provided with Norton Ghost 2001. You can use
it to manually create partitions using advanced options. However if this tool is
useful and is even automatically used by Ghost when you clone hard disks it
isnít as powerful as Partition Magic can be.

For those of you that donít already use Norton Ghost
2001 Iíd strongly recommend you buy this awesome update so youíll have a
crash protected PC right away. With other backup software sometimes you are
unsure of the integrity of the backup, but with Ghost 2001 you donít have to
worry. Existing Ghost users will be able to burn images directly on CDs with
this upgrade thatís the biggest reason for upgrading.